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I felt like a bad father. I let my 10-year-old son play a Rated M (for Mature) video game, and I felt like I was going straight to bad-parent hell. How did I get myself into this mess?

It all started innocently enough. I had, in a previous column, more or less predicted the Xbox's demise. More precisely, I posited that Microsoft would abandon this piece of gaming hardware, much as it had walked away from so many other past hardware ventures. That bit of prose resulted in a rapid response from one of Microsoft's chief PR agencies, and a lengthy discussion about the brightbrilliant would be a more apt descriptionfuture that lay before the Xbox and its legion of customers/admirers.

I'd never tried out an Xbox and was willing to admit that perhaps I didn't understand the platform well enough. My contact offered to loan me a unit and added another bit of good news: Halo 2 was soon to arrive. Not much of a video-game follower, I asked dumbly, "What's Halo 2?" The PR flack went onto describe the game and its protagonist, Master Chief (what kind of name is that?) and how the original Halo was the most popular game on the Xbox platform. He said he'd send along a copy of Halo 2, too, as soon as it was available.

Within weeks, I was surreptitiously setting up the Xbox and Halo 2 in my master bedroom. I found this necessary because I knew that if my video-game-junkie son, who already requests playtime with his GameCube on a semi-hourly basis, discovered the Xbox, he'd think it was meant for him. The other reason was that the lower left-hand corner of the Halo 2 Special Edition tin container sported an ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) rating of M. (The ESRB is the not-for-profit organization that developed the video-game rating system and applies ratings to all new games.) This is a mass-market game, the most popular one on Microsoft's gaming platform, Why, I wondered, would the company let it ship with a "Mature" rating? I was shocked, but even more so, I was certain that I was not going to let my 10-year-old play this game. So I hid myself and the game away so he would not find it or see me playing it; with an M rating, there was no telling what might appear on the screen.

Ah, the best-laid plans. My son did happen to walk into the room when I was deeply engaged with Master Chief and his troops, trying to forestall an all-out alien invasion and victory.

"What's that?!" he asked.

"Uh, an Xbox," I replied.

His eyes darted left and right, looking at the Xbox, trying to see my TV screen, and then they settled on the distinctive Halo 2 case.

"Ohmygod! You've got Halo 2! Can I play?" he inquired.

"No. It's rated M," I snapped back.

What followed was the expected seesaw of "oh, come on!" "no!" and "Billy plays." In the end, I held my ground and he stormed off, slamming the door in a huff. Continue reading

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About the Author

A 25-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance Ulanoff is the former Editor in Chief of PCMag.com.
Lance Ulanoff has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases, "on line" meant "waiting" and CPU speeds were measured in single-digit megahertz. He's traveled the globe to report on a vast array of consumer and business... See Full Bio

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